About this project

$23,662

261

Converse with your plants

Ever wonder how your plants are feeling? Maybe you’ve always wanted to grow your own thriving garden full of flowers and vegetables, but didn’t know where to start? Well now there’s hope!

Bitponics is your shortcut to a green thumb. It’s designed to be an add-on to any existing hydroponics system, and it will simplify and automate your growing process. Once you tell it what you’re trying to grow, it will use a database of knowledge built up by the community to create a “growing plan” for you. Bitponics will automate anything that can be controlled by a power outlet, like water pumps and lights. No more need for a bunch of bulky mechanical timers crowding your power strip! For things we can’t automate (like flushing and refilling your reservoir), we’ll remind you by whatever means you choose: email, text, or in-app notifications. Our plug and play solution is designed to be as simple as possible to set up and won’t require a bunch of technical know-how.

A prototype of the Bitponics device. Your reward for pledges $250 and up!

Why Hydroponics?

Hydroponics is an innovative approach that’s ideal for environments where plants can’t normally grow, like apartments and harsh climates. It’s basically any method of growing plants without soil, and instead providing nutrients directly to the roots with a nutrient solution. The root systems don’t need to reach as far, so more plants can be grown in the same amount of space. But because you’re essentially creating the entire growing environment, it has a steeper learning curve compared to traditional soil gardening.

Our goal with Bitponics is to allow more people to grow plants, no matter where they are or how much experience they have. We want to make hydroponic gardening easy for everyone.

Your reward for a $100 pledge: a "water culture" hydroponic system.

How will it work?

Bitponics is made up of two parts: a sensor device and your online account. Once you sign up, you enter in the details of what you’re growing and the type of hydroponic system you have. The next step is to generate a growing plan: Bitponics can either create one for you or you can create your own. The growing plan is the step-by-step roadmap for how to take care of your plants. It will tell you:

How many hours of light your plants need per day

When to change the lighting schedule (for example, when your plants are ready for their flowering phase, we’d switch the lights to a 12-hour cycle)

What pH range is safe for your plants

When to replace your nutrient solution

What balance of nutrients to use for each growing phase

How often to run your water pumps

The Bitponics device will collect readings from its sensors and log them to your online account. You can also manually log data and even upload photos to track progress. Whenever sensor data deviates too far from your growing plan’s recommendations, we’ll alert you to how to fix it. The device will initially ship with the following sensors:

Water & air temperature

Humidity

Brightness (to determine if your plants are receiving enough light)

pH (for measuring the acidity of the nutrient solution)

And if you want even more detailed data, you’ll be able to purchase an electrical conductivity (EC) sensor for measuring the concentration of nutrients in the solution. We will also have your device setup to work with Cosm right out of the box, so you can share your data with the greater Internet of Things network!

The device will also have two power outlets that can be set up on timers via the website to control anything from lights to pumps.

The Bitponics Dashboard, where you can see real-time data from all of your sensors and manage your growing plan.

Community of Growers

Once you’re a member of the Bitponics community, you’ll be able to share your growing plan and results, and try out other members’ growing plans and rate how successful you were with them. If you’re completely new to hydroponic gardening, we think this will be a great way to get started: you tell us you want to grow tomatoes, and we show you a growing plan that’s been rated as being “easy” and has been successfully used by other members of the community.

Cost

We’re aiming to retail the Bitponics device at $395. But as a special thank you for supporting this project, we're offering it for pledges $250 and up. With a purchase, you become a member of the online Bitponics community. You’ll be able to store 1 year’s worth of growing history and hundreds of photos on the Bitponics website. And we’ll have extra membership tiers if you want to store unlimited growing history.

If you just want to try out the website without buying a device (like if you just want to create a growing plan that sends you email reminders), we’ll have a completely free tier that lets you store 6 months of growing history. And we’re big believers in people owning their own data, so we’ll always provide an easy way for you to export all of your logs and photos.

Open Source Hardware

We’re open sourcing the device and its firmware, allowing everyone to contribute to the development of the Bitponics platform. If you’ve got some tech skills, you could add additional functionality, like adding more sensors or sending logged data to services besides the Bitponics website. And we’re writing the device firmware in the popular Arduino programming language, which will make it accessible and easy to tinker with.

Education

We think that Bitponics will be an amazing resource for schools. Kids will be able to get unprecedented insight into the environmental factors that support plant growth. And with the community aspect, schools across the country could run collaborative experiments: imagine two schools running the same growing plan, with the same seeds and setup, but with one using fluorescent lights and the other using LED’s. Think of how much students could learn about photosynthesis and how it relates to different wavelengths of light!

Now think of all the other experiments being run across the gardening community. How much knowledge is gained every season by hydroponic growers, each trying out little tweaks to their garden to see if it’ll make their plants happier? Imagine if all of a sudden, we could all share that with each other in real-time. What could we learn by looking at past growing history, comparing it to current results, and examining how each environmental factor played its part in our plants’ health? Let's find out!

Partners

We’ve already discussed partnerships with various organizations including Boswyck Farms and Dekalb Market Farm. So as soon as the system’s ready, we’ll be able to bring Bitponics to the the educational environments and communities that will benefit the most from it.

Where We’re At & Where Your Money Will Go

We've developed functioning prototypes of the device and software. Your contribution will help us fund initial manufacturing costs. We’ve finalized all the sensors and are now working to refine the WiFi system to make setup dead simple. For the more complex sensors, pH and PPM, we partnered with local bioengineers Atlas Scientific. We've chosen to manufacture the board through Seeed Studio because of our past experience with them. The goal is to send the final design out for fabrication late July. By mid-September we will receive the boards and begin testing and final assembly to begin shipping out in December.

On the software side, we’ve completed designs and are currently hard at work developing the website and back-end. Once the site is ready for beta, we’ll be developing apps for iPhone and Android. Your contribution will allow us to dedicate the resources to make the website & apps as awesome as we know they can be.

If we meet our funding goal, we plan to deliver the first batch of devices and have the software beta ready in September.

FAQ

In a "water culture" hydroponic system, your plants sit in an aerated nutrient solution. That means your solution will have air bubbles pumped into it to provide oxygen to the plants' roots. The system we're offering holds 6 plants. It's great for getting started because it has fewer parts than more complex systems and it's perfect to just set on a tabletop by a window.

- Six 3" Net Cups - these are the individual containers your plants will sit in.

- Hydroton (clay pebble growing medium, for filling your net cups)

- Polystyrene Foam "Raft" - This floats on top of your nutrient solution, and has 6 holes for the net cups to sit in. We use polystyrene because it's a safe foam that resists mildew and won't leech any chemicals into the solution.

We have a photo of this system on the project page. And here's a webpage that goes into detail on how to build a similar one: http://www.hydroponics-simplified.com/raft-lettuce.html. The system we provide is similar but will be made of higher-quality, safer components all around.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge $15 or more
About $15

You’ll get early access to the software beta and a 1-year premium membership to the Bitponics website!
Premium membership means you can store unlimited sensor data and 1,000 photos. Even if you don't have the Bitponics device, you can still manually log your readings & notes on our website and get all the same great growing plan & notification capabilities.
We'll be offering this membership at $25/year after we launch, so this reward is one way we're saying thank you for being an early supporter!

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge $20 or more
About $20

You’ll get a one-of-a-kind 3” clay pot laser-etched with the Bitponics logo. (Free shipping in the U.S., but please add $10 for international shipping). You’ll also get early access to the software beta and a 1-year premium membership to the Bitponics website.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge $50 or more
About $50

Attend a hydroponics workshop run by us! We’ll show you simple ways of getting started with hydroponic gardening. We’ll be running this in NYC. If you can’t make it, we’ll send you a special Bitponics water bottle (aluminum and BPA-free, of course!) instead. You’ll also get early access to the software beta and a 1-year premium membership to the Bitponics website.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge $100 or more
About $100

You’ll get a simple “water culture” hydroponics system that’s great for first-time growers. Perfect for growing a wide variety of salad greens, the system will be able to support 6 plants at a time. We’ll include all the parts you need (container, pump and seed-starting plugs), plus instructions on how to get started. (Note: this system doesn’t include a Bitponics device, but it’s simple enough that you won’t need one. Please add $75 for international shipping). You’ll also get early access to the software beta and a 1-year premium membership to the Bitponics website.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge $350 or more
About $350

You'll get all of the above! Everything you need to get an awesome garden started in your home. A Bitponics device, a water culture hydroponic system, a spot at our hydroponics workshop, and a 1-year premium membership.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge $500 or more
About $500

You’re amazing. For so generously funding the research and prototyping, you'll get all of the above. Your Bitponics device will be personalized with a custom laser-etched engraving. You’ll get free support for a year, plus a lifetime account on the Bitponics website. And exclusive previews of all future versions of the Bitponics device!

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge $1,000 or more
About $1,000

Everything from the $500 pledge level, and in addition, we’ll custom-build your Bitponics device to include the optional EC/TDS sensor, up to 4 power outlets and up to two additional sensors. Contact us and let’s talk about how we can build the perfect device for your setup. (Please add $100 for international shipping)

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge $2,500 or more
About $2,500

We’ll come to your home within a 200 mile radius of NYC and build you a complete, customized hydroponics system! Includes the Bitponics device with the optional EC/TDS meter included, free support for a year, plus a lifetime account on the Bitponics website. And exclusive previews of all future versions of the Bitponics device!

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge $3,500 or more
About $3,500

We’ll come to your home anywhere in the U.S. and build you a complete, customized hydroponics system! Includes the Bitponics device with the optional EC/TDS meter included, free support for a year, plus a lifetime account on the Bitponics website. And exclusive previews of all future versions of the Bitponics device!